Maybe it’s some kind of pre-set, yearly thing, kind of like the program in your computer that resets the clock to daylight savings time.  Maybe someone was doing research on the area weather and realized that it was almost exactly a year ago that we were supposed to have the Storm To End All Storms.  Because the local meteorologists are at it again.

Remember last year, when they were predicting that all Heck was going to break loose, that schools would close and roads would turn into bobsled tracks and that we should all stock up on canned spaghetti, plastic sheeting, and duct tape?  Well, it’s been almost exactly one year.  One year, eight days, and an assorted number of hours, minutes, and seconds.  Apparently those persons hired by the local network affiliates to track the insane mood swings of Our Favorite Mother (Nature, that is) need an occasional hit of the white stuff.  Snow, that is.  Frozen flakes of fury, falling in a frenzy.  If you believe the weatherpeople, every molecule of moisture in the Upper Mississippi Valley is gathering to deliver a giant smackdown on the city.  The forecasters include the rest of the southern half of the state, too, because despite the belief that most of the residents have that this city is the center of the effing universe, there are other towns and villages and people out there that are going to get dumped on, too.  But it’s mostly the city.  How we all need to be Prepared!  Because there is going to be a Lot! Of! Snow!

A confluence of low pressure systems, jet streams, Pacific moisture, Gulf Coast Moisture, cold air, the planets in alignment, the stripes on the woolly bear caterpillars, and the thickness of beaver houses has produced all of the signs that the meteorologists need to predict that this one will be a “doozy”.  They point to the red spiky lines and the blue bumpy lines and the wavy orange line, and with barely suppressed ecstasy describe the Storm That Is To Come.  This one is going to have heavy, wet snow; blowing and drifting, and whiteouts that will make Martha Stewart’s sheets look positively dingy.

“But,” they told us, “It won’t start until late Saturday night.”

Which is why, I guess, when I looked out the window at 6:00 pm last night (which was Friday, by the way), I could barely see across the street.

And why the plows have been out on the roads scraping off the eight inches of snow that has already fallen.

And that was just the first wave.  The wave that evidently caught the meteorologists off guard.  They must have been too busy focusing on the second wave.  The one that is supposed to dump up to fourteen more inches on us tonight.  Because it seems that Ma Nature wants us to be able to empathize with New York State and its one hundred freakin’ inches of snow.

And, like good little lemmings, we all rushed to the grocery stores and the liquor stores and wiped them out.  Between the storm and the BIG Wisconsin – Ohio State basketball game tonight, there isn’t a morsel of junk food left to buy, and the cartloads of booze being purchased by beardless boys in Badger garb boggles the brain.  Centuries from now, when archeologists dig our bodies out from the glaciated layers that are due to begin shrouding us at any moment, they’ll know immediately why we died.

It won’t be the cheetos, the chips and dip, or the nachos.  It won’t be the adult beverages clenched in our cold, cold fists.  It won’t be the fact that the Badger basketball team isn’t as awesome as the sportscasters (who apparently are under the influence of the same psychotic snowstorm-generated powers as the meteorologists) say they are.

Those future archeologists will take one look at the grimaces on our frozen faces and the remote controls clenched in our other fists and know what killed us.

It was the realization that this city isn’t the center of the effing universe.  Or any other universe, for that matter.

Now, excuse me.  I need to go buy some more duct tape, before it’s all sold out.

It’s old.  I love old.

It’s pink.  I hate pink.

It used to sit on the bathroom floor in my parents’ house.  I love the nostalgia.

It now sits on the floor in my bathroom, and I only use it a couple times each month.  And when I do, I usually hate the results.  Because it never lies.  Whatever number it gives me, I know is the truth.  And the truth is a weighty issue.

It’s my bathroom scale.

About a week into 2007 (yeah, I’m a procrastinator.  I made my New Year’s Resolution a week late.  I figured that way it’s not a New Year’s Resolution, so it won’t be destined to be broken like all the other NYRs I’ve made) I decided, after a long, critical, depressing look in the bathroom mirror, that I really need to take control of my weight before it takes control of me.  The lumpy, bumpy bits were starting to get even lumpier and bumpier, and there were ever so many of them, and, well, there are only so many formless sweatshirts one can shove into ones closet before one runs shrieking into the night.  Especially after one tries on a slinky black velvety-drape-y camisole, and even though it’s a ladies’ extra-large, it doesn’t look like what you expect peeking out from under a dressy jacket.

It looked like a pajama top.  A pajama top that was two sizes too big in the shoulders, and two sizes too small ‘round the tummy.

And before one walks to the hardware section of the store with cami in hand, looking for a tape measure to see if this so-called “extra-large” item of apparel is really an XL that had a “small” bottom piece sewn on by accident by some seven-year-old Indonesian sweatshop slave, one looks down at oneself and realizes that it’s not the clothes that are out of proportion.  It’s me.

And so began the quest to re-size myself.

Out with the potato chips, popcorn, and cheezy poofs.  In with the trail mix and string cheese.  Out with the hot chocolate; in with the chamomile tea.  No more lemonade mix for my bottled water – now it’s Green Tea To Go.  I restrict portions during the week, and indulge on weekends, but with healthier foods.  Nuts.  Dried cranberries.  Stuff that doesn’t have an interminable list of preservatives and additives on the label.  Nothing radical, just food that’s basic, closer to what comes out of the ground or off the animal.

It must be working.  This morning, the little pink box in my bathroom told me that I am now nearly 7% less weighty than I was last month at this time.  And that is making me happy, happy, happy.  So happy that I tried out a new patisserie in town.  I celebrated with pain au chocolat.  And I can tell you that this city still doesn’t have a decent French pastry shop.

But in the end, that really isn't a bad thing.  I hate that my wallet is now 11.5% lighter.  But I love it, too, because those over-baked, dry pastries won’t tempt me to inhale half a dozen of them every Saturday morning and thus balloon to proportions that even the baggiest pajamas can’t hide.  Because I am not one of those slackers that thinks flannel below-waist-apparel is appropriate to wear out in public.  Even if there are cute little monkeys printed on them.

And that’s the truth, from a not-so-weighty miss.

Whew.